Project Vote Smart infers candidate issue stances on key topics by summarizing public speeches and public statements. Congressional candidates are given the opportunity to respond in detail; about 11% did so in the 2012 races.

Project Vote Smart summarizes candidate stances on the following topic: 'Budget: In order to balance the budget, do you support reducing defense spending?'

for the research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) or procurement of a long-range penetrating bomber aircraft;

to make the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons; or

for the B61 or W78 life extension program.

Requires that, beginning in FY2014, the Navy shall include no more than eight operational ballistic-missile submarines available for deployment.

Prohibits using DOD funds for FY2014 or thereafter to maintain more than 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 250 submarine-launched ballistic missiles

Prohibits funding RDT&E or procurement of a new ICBM or for the medium extended air defense system.

Opponent's argument against bill: (Twitchy blog, "Who said what?", twitchy.com):
North Korea has evidently been conducting nuclear device tests, and the timing couldn't be better, of course, as President Obama is expected to call for a reduction in nuclear arms tonight in his State of the Union address. Mass. Rep. Ed Markey is totall

Amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to require that the records sought pertain to an individual in contact with a foreign power.

Amends the USA PATRIOT Act to minimize the acquisition and retention of information and to prohibit its unauthorized dissemination.

Imposes additional requirements on the authorized use of pen registers and trap and trace devices (devices for recording incoming and outgoing telephone numbers).

Prohibits the searching of collections of communications of US persons.

Opponent's argument against (Electronic Frontier Foundation): The bill only addresses a small portion of the problems created by NSA spying. It does not touch problems like NSA programs to sabotage encryption standards; it does not effectively tackle
the issue of collecting information on people outside of the US; and it doesn't address the authority that the government is supposedly using to tap the data links between service provider data centers, such as those owned by Google and Yahoo. The bill also does not address excessive secrecy; it won't deal with the major over-classification issues or the state secrets privilege.

Opponent's argument against (J. Kirk Wiebe, former NSA Senior Intelligence Analyst interview with TheRealNews.com): It's window dressing. Stopping bulk collection is a good step, but the only thing that's going to fix this is direct access into NSA's databases by an independent group of hackers, techie types, people like Snowden who know how to get into a network and look at things and verify that the data they're collecting and what they're doing with it complies with the Constitution. The NSA has essentially operated illegally--unconstitutionally--for 60% of its existence.